To the distant shore there was a light flooding it came on ships with bright green sailsI saw you up in the mountains where the wild pigs snuffle andruck up the dawn’s damp mudand the streams swell with rain water

I had been in those places beforethey swum up like slow grey fish from the back of my brain, rippling the surface so gently Icould barely tell, but could see the colour ring out like a drunk radio waveIt flickered my eyelidTo see the clouds shadows on the scrub mountainsTo see the shafts that break through them, and mirror the emeralds in the grass.The smoke from those houses dwindled upwards from the bottom of the valley to the top,fingers raised to the sky, which raised back, shrugged off by the mountains like a scarf, sothat there was a gap between them, which gave the mountains a dark glow,thudding like a headache on the skyline.

I was in the oven of the earth, trembling as a plague for lack of sleep

I can see the lines they are sediment on a hill's sideThey are the hillside, millions of years"this one is the dream of the rocks”Teach me the times I have missedstaggering through blank faces and screwed tight nighttimes, desperate with silence

One day I will make you a thing it will bring tears to the eyes of the world and swell like a tumour in the brain of time.

It was an old country, the roads wouldn’t take you anywhereno matter how many times you triedthey just led round in smaller and wider loops.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

they ran like a grotto over the slope, flicked in and out of the tall pines

that are misted in the morning

sometimes you could swear the mountain was a cloud and that the cloud could be breathed away

but no. the hounds chased through the trunks

determined against the cold, although spindly.

I could not see the man.

in that place the boars dig with their noses and the people are lost
and you are.

Winter 2008/9

He wrote his name

In the dust, he wrote his namebut water could not hold itso he took the bark from an old oak treethat was cracked and carvedas rocks by magmaor an old man's tongueand slept the night in the dustwhere names were finger tracedin the safe place, where only

the cuckoo spit that fell on his face

in the morning could bother him

I remember when the lake froze

I remember when the lake froze
and we rushed
to skid around on the
ice
we jumped and jumped on it
to make it
crack
but it never did
that lake must have been
frozen deep deep down
probably for miles
and miles

I remember the bits
of things stuck
in the ice
leaves, twigs
half in
half out

The Black Bear

The idea of the Bear unnerves me

silent and huge, ash and fur and
red eyeball looking.

Upright, like a man standing
paws leather and ready, hung
shadows on padding gloom
over the floorboards.

Hollow bone, echoing
like a horses gurn
waiting at the top of the stairs.

It is wrapped in the sheets and breathing
waiting unmoving and unbending is the Black Bear

Not like the stars
not flicking between the trees, not hiding

not concealed
a speckle on an oak leaf.

It is in the clearing
unheard, felt like a lift in your stomach, a stone
on the nape of your neck
waiting in the kitchen with the peelers and the forks.